How to read this grid
Every square is one figure the State of Michigan publishes for this district: the share of students who scored proficient or above on that grade's test, or the grade's mean Student Growth Percentile (SGP), which measures how far students moved compared with students statewide who started from the same score. Nothing in the district blocks is calculated here — each square is the published number, and hovering shows the students tested.
Colors
Proficiency runs red at 0% through yellow at 50% to green at 100%. Growth runs red at 35 through yellow at 50 — exactly median growth statewide — to green at 65. Rank among districts colors each square by where this district stands among every Metro Detroit district that publishes it, green at the top, and shows the rank instead of the value. A grey dash is a figure the state suppressed (fewer than 10 students); an empty square was not tested that year.
Reading it
- Down a column is one year: every grade, the students who happened to be in it.
- Along a diagonal is one class as it moves up — grade 3 one year, grade 4 the next. Highlight a class outlines that diagonal. Because every class arrives with its own starting point, the fair comparison is a class with itself a year earlier, and its growth square, which already measures it against students who started in the same place.
- Pre-COVID / Post-COVID. Michigan cancelled testing in 2019-20. vs 2018-19 sets the latest year against the last pre-pandemic year; vs prior is the year-over-year change. Both are in points.
Read with care
- Grade 8 moved from M-STEP to PSAT in 2018-19 and grade 11 is the SAT's college-ready benchmark. Each test sets its own bar, so compare a row with itself over time rather than rows with each other.
- The school squares are composites: the enrollment-weighted share proficient (or mean SGP) across every Math and ELA test the building gave that year — the same formula the district ranking uses, applied to one school. A building that spans levels mixes tests in that number.
- A subgroup square counts only those students; small subgroups are suppressed more often and swing more from year to year.